Talk:Terraforming in popular culture/Archive 1

Trivial examples

I've removed the examples that I thought were clear examples of bare-mention trivia. This has nothing to do with the importance of the works that mention terraforming, it has do do with how much importance terraforming (and the consequences etc.) are given in the work. Those examples removed were generally just examples of fictional worlds where terraforming is present. That doesn't merit a mention. --Eyrian 21:52, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't think you are in a position to determine such a subjective criterion that has no consensus nor guideline. I'm having great difficulty taking you seriously. Jack Williamson invented the term "terraforming" and you removed a reference to his work from this article as "trivial" You also removed Total Recall, one of the best examples of terraforming in film, and Farmer in the Sky, one of the best early examples of terraforming in fiction that addressed the subject scientifically. I think this calls into question your entire contribution history which appears to consist of removing what you personally consider to be "trivia" from popular culture articles. Wikipedia doesn't work that way. —Viriditas | Talk 01:00, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Best how? Is that more original research? All I saw was an uncited reference to a movie that included terraforming. You claim Jack Williamson coined the term. Where was the citation for that? Nowhere. I commend your rewrite, but the material as it stood was unacceptable. Your personal attacks are unnecessary, and indicate a misunderstanding of my contributions. And, indeed, Wikipedia does work in a way such that editors can remove trivia. The article on cars doesn't feature a list of fictional works containing them. These sorts of lists need to be built upon substantial references, with cited reasons for importance. Otherwise, they can, of course, be purged as irrelevant or unverifiable. --Eyrian 01:49, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm not following you. Are you saying that you remove information from articles based on your own personal beliefs and experience? So, if you aren't personally aware of something, you remove it instead of adding a citation request? Is that correct? Are you also saying that you didn't take the time or make the effort to determine if the information was "irrelevant or unverifiable" but simply "purged" it without checking? And have you engaged in this very editing behavior on the dozens, perhaps hundreds of popular culture articles you have edited? —Viriditas | Talk 02:06, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

I suggest you take a look at WP:V#Burden of evidence. If something is uncited, it can be removed. End of discussion. If I think something looks good, but it's uncited, I'll add a tag, but that is by no means required or recommended by policy. --Eyrian 02:32, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I'm quite familiar with the burden of proof, however I suggest you read that section again as well as Wikipedia:Revert#Explain_reverts. You seem to be more interested in promoting your POV through edit warring than in improving articles. If you had concerns about specific information, you should have immediately brought them to the talk page and not engaged in a series of unexplained reverts. I should not have had to ask you to come to the talk page and explain your reverts (see above). Furthermore, we don't just remove uncited content because it is uncited; we remove uncited material for a reason, which you apparently still lack. —Viriditas | Talk 02:37, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

My reverts were explained. Please read the edit summaries. In this case, improving the article involved removing parts of it. A great deal of the editing process involves removal. And no, taking things to the talk page is not always the way to do things. There was no talk page at the time, giving me the idea that this wasn't a very contentious article, so I was bold and removed some low-quality, uncited material. Being uncited is sufficient condition for removal. In and of itself. --Eyrian 03:35, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't find your edit summaries to be satisfactory. If material is unsourced, that is not a sufficient condition for removal. Such a removal only applies to material that is "doubtful" and "challenged or likely to be challenged", or in other cases such as BLP. Simply because something is unsourced is never a reason for removal. WP:RS and WP:V make this very clear. Finally, WP:CITE outlines a procedure for dealing with unsourced content; it does not recommend removal. Please consult Wikipedia:Citing_sources#Dealing_with_citation_problems. Thank you. —Viriditas | Talk 03:44, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

"Any edit lacking a source may be removed" (from WP:V). It doesn't get any clearer. In the section you linked, it mentions that material an editor finds harmful, it can be removed immediately. --Eyrian 03:47, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

And just prior to that it states, "Material that is challenged or likely to be challenged needs a reliable source, which should be cited in the article." Ignorance of the topic is not a "challenge". You should have used a fact tag, as you had no rationale for removing the material. Again, please consult best practices for "dealing with citation problems". I would like to see you remove "the sky is blue" from Diffuse sky radiation simply because it is unsourced. —Viriditas | Talk 03:49, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

That'd be removed for a very different reason. As to the question of "likely to be challenged" versus "any edit...", they are two different sentences. Both are true. --Eyrian 03:58, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

The material you removed, including Jack Williamson, the inventor of the word "terraform", Heinlein's Farmer in the Sky, and the film Total Recall, was neither doubtful, challenged, likely to be challenged, or lacking in reliable sources or verification. Most importantly, the material asserted facts, not opinions. Instead of trying to verify this information, you simply removed it; that's not appropriate. You didn't look for references, use the fact tag, or move the content to talk per Wikipedia:Citing_sources#Dealing_with_citation_problems. And your claim that WP:V supports your lazy behavior is simply false. See Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability/Archive_11#What_the_policy_does_not_mean. "The only statements which can be removed according to this policy are unverifiable ones." —Viriditas | Talk 11:00, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

The page you linked is a talk page, not a policy page. And, I doubted the importance of those entries. That is sufficient. And there was an implicit opinion involved: that of importance. And yes, removing information that's unverified most certainly is appropriate. And I can't help but think that my (rather careful, if you look at them from the perspective of an outsider looking for cited importance) actions here have spurred more effort than an "unreferenced" tag ever would. Which, of course, would have been the laziest of all possible actions. --Eyrian 18:07, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Of course I linked to a talk page; that is where the policy is worked out, and where the reasons for its placement are explained. FYI... SlimVirgin added "Any edit lacking a source may be removed" to the policy at 21:40, 16 December 2005 [1] which in turn, sparked an important discussion beginning in Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability/Archive_4#An_invitation_to_edit_warring, which addresses the current problem we are discussing. The material went through several changes and was not (nor now) written in stone. SlimVirgin further elaborated in Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability/Archive_5#Material_from_WP:CITE, saying, "Regarding whether citing sources is mandatory, the policy is that people ought to (ideally) cite sources when they make an edit, but it's not mandatory. That is, if someone makes an edit and doesn't cite a source, you can't take them to the arbcom for a policy violation. However, if the edit is challenged, a source must be provided, or the edit may be deleted. Exactly when it's deleted depends on the context and on common sense. If it's a potentially defamatory or in some other way dangerous claim, for example, it should be deleted immediately. If it's a harmless claim, it could be moved to the talk page, or left in the article for a few days... No, it isn't policy that sources must be included with any new edit...We can't make that policy in part because it's unenforceable, in part because we'd have to say exactly what kinds of edits sources had to accompany...The policy as it stood said that any edit that is challenged and has no source may be removed, and I don't feel we can go further than this, particularly as some editors (e.g. Joe Mabel above) feel that may be going a bit too far already. I completely support the idea that using good sources is crucial, but I also don't think we should produce a draconian policy; and anyway, if we do, people will just ignore it. The policy should be reflective of community consensus, and based on how people edit, no one thinks that adding a source for every edit ought to be mandatory..." Interestingly, in Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability/Archive_8#Suggested_adjustment_to_policy, a growing concern was raised about editors who remove reasonable claims from articles simply because they are unsourced. The consensus seems to be that editors should never remove unsourced claims that are reasonable, but instead should tag the articles or claims first, and if necessary, move them to the talk page. At the time of this discussion the policy in a nutshell read in part, "Any unsourced material may be challenged and removed". This is essentially the same as the current nutshell, "Articles should only contain material that has been published by reliable sources. Editors adding or restoring material that has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, or quotations, must provide a reliable published source, or the material may be removed." You say you doubted the importance of those entries, but I don't see a reason for your claim, nor any evidence, such as a publication, and that is insufficient. In order for you to challenge the material, you have to do so with an argument based on reason and evidence; you didn't do this. Your deletions appeared to be vandalism, which is why I came to this talk page that I've had on my watchlist since I split it off from terraforming. When I reverted your unexplained deletions, you engaged in an edit war. That is contrary to WP:V and other policies. You're supposed to challenge the material on the talk page and move the material to that page for others to source. I can't imagine how many popular culture articles you've done this to, removing valid, reasonable, important information merely because you had a bad hair day or a fly landed in your soup. If I was to comb through your edit contributions, would I find other people like myself, cleaning up after your deletions (which I consider vandalism) or would I find a trail of deleted content and articles, disappearing into the ether, never to be seen again? Please think about your actions before you continue this behavior. If you remove material from an article, you need to make an effort to verify it to support your argument that it is unverified, or trivial or whatever. You haven't done this. And if you can't spare the time to do this, please use the fact tag or the unreferenced tag and wait for an acceptable period of time. Your wholesale deletions of verifiable and reasonable material are not helping the encyclopedia project in any way. If I had the time, I would go through your edit contribution list and revert every deletion you've ever made (probably in the hundreds if not thousands) but I don't have that kind of time. —Viriditas | Talk 03:00, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

In this case, please consider that what must be referenced is the importance and relevance of the information, which is, to my mind, dubious in every case that I removed. If, for example, someone added a cited sentence about some minor point of cloud behavior to the article on the sky, it would probably moved, or removed. Similarly, if someone added a cited list of ordinary things that are blue to the article on the color, that would be removed. I expect that attempts to spin it off into a list or category would fail. What there is in the article about blue are pieces of prose describing how the color is significant in human culture (typically cited). That is the key here. In this case, the relevance of all of these examples comes into question, and I frequently found it dubious in the examples I removed. So, yes, I removed dubious information that was uncited. Quite permitted and encouraged. Again, please consider that information must be both topical and true. Topicality is the problem here. By citing a work that specifically discusses how terraforming occurs in a particular work, the importance of that is assured, therefore making it topical information. By providing citations, the former can be separated from the latter. Gathering together a list of works that happen to mention the word Terraforming in them is neither useful nor encyclopedic. Without proper references, that determination cannot be made, and the information should be purged or moved elsewhere.

Before making more personal attacks, I'd suggest you consult WP:VAND. I'm not deliberately hurting the encyclopedia here. I am taking a deliberate action that you think is harmful. Please don't confuse the two. As to my alleged "wake of destruction", I'll simply leave you with this gem I removed from the article on the color azure: "Berry Blue Jell-O is a bright azure color." --Eyrian 05:03, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

The point is clear; you didn't make the determination, nor did you verify the content. You removed it from the article for absolutely no reason. And when you removed the inventor and popularizer of the term "terraforming" as "trivial", and revert attempts to restore easily verifiable material multiple times, that can only be construed as vandalism no matter how you define it. Don't edit articles based on ignorance; edit them based on careful consideration of the material. —Viriditas | Talk 11:49, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

No, vandalism is not whatever you want to define it as in order to attack someone who disagrees with you. And, it's not to you to determine what's easily verifiable.I doubted the material's relevance and importance. Therefore, it needs to be cited. I'm done going in circles with you; your attacks have shown that policy isn't that important to you when it doesn't suit your desires. It's good you've decided to add citations. --Eyrian 19:24, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

I'll repeat myself for your benefit. I saw, what appeared to be vandalism by you, to this article, on my watchlist. I came here to revert your vandalism. You repeatedly removed easily verifiable material due to your misreading, misunderstanding, and misinterpretation of policies. You claim that you "doubted" the relevance and importance of the material, yet you never once tried to verify it. I suggest that policy is not important to you, because if it was, you would not continue to engage in this behavior, which according to your contribution history has not changed in any way. We don't remove material from articles merely because it lacks a source. I've explained this repeatedly using policy and guidelines pages. I have no desire other than to improve this encyclopedia, and the adding of citations was done to put a stop to your vandalism. You are deliberately weakening the encyclopedia by editing articles based on what you perceive to be your "doubt". We don't do that. We edit based on informed opinions supported by active verification, research, and discussion efforts. You engaged in neither of these things, and you continue to edit articles based on your personal beliefs; that's not appropriate. —Viriditas | Talk 20:20, 23 June 2007 (UTC)